As you may have noticed from our website, we are quite stringent about the homes our puppies go to. This, we believe, is something required of us as breeders and is essential to keeping our practices ethical. As a result of this, some of our puppies stay with us a bit longer while we wait for their perfect lifetime homes to come along. This is not a problem for us--we love our puppies and are always happy to love on them just a bit longer.

However, there is a pervasive assumption that older puppies are somehow less valuable or worthwhile. Let us tell you as people who are thoroughly experienced in puppy life stages, older puppies will not disappoint. They are typically easier to train, their personalities are already evident, and they are through with their most frustrating puppy stages. They have had all their puppy shots and their immune systems are stronger at 12 weeks and up.

Furthermore, no dog is too old to train. Some much older dogs can be set in their ways but they are not untrainable. To be sure, trainability can be attributed more to personality rather than age. In fact, in our experience, older puppies are easier to train than younger ones--that applies to potty training, as well as basic training (e.g., sit, stay, down) and tricks. It's a common misconception that you need a puppy to be younger in order to instill proper training. The cognitive abilities of older puppies are more advanced and their concept of "right and wrong," so to speak, is more developed. The AKC recommends potty training no earlier than 12 weeks. Potty training is significantly easier (and less frustrating) with a puppy that is 5-11 months of age.

Many of our dogs were purchased outside of their so-called "ideal puppy age" and we found their transition to be significantly easier and we know we did not miss out on anything with these guys (another major misconception). A bond with an older puppy, or even a senior adult, can be just as strong as a bond started with a puppy at 10 weeks of age. So, please do not give in to the stereotypes and overlook these precious puppies. Besides, we're all above stereotypes, right? (used with permission from AstonAcresDachshunds.com)